


Finding Each Other

by redreaper86



Category: Swiss Army Man (2016), The Lobster (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crossover Pairings, Cuddling & Snuggling, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed, Size Difference, Sleepy Boys, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28316079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redreaper86/pseuds/redreaper86
Summary: David has just escaped from a crazed matchmaking cult and is at the E.R. But all his fellow cult-victims from the hotel are there too, and there are no beds left.Unless David wants to share a bed with a certain other survivor -- this one of a deserted island, Hank.
Relationships: David (The Lobster)/Hank Thomson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Finding Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> Special shoutout to foggys_cupcake_girl who's idea of having David escape from a cult I borrowed.

How he goes from holding a knife to his eye in a restaurant bathroom mirror to leaving the woman he was about to blind himself for alone at one of the tables at aforementioned restaurant to check himself into the nearest hospital emergency room, isn’t something David can explain very well to himself, let alone the E.R. head nurse. But luckily, she seems to know way more than he does about what is going on with him.

He’d been kidnapped, she explains, by a crazed cult, and brainwashed into thinking that he was living in a dystopian world where the only way to go on living as a human being was to pair up with somebody. And if you couldn’t find a mate, the cult had gas-lit David (and everyone else at the hotel) into thinking that you would be turned into an animal of your choice. It all sounds so insane to David now, even though it had made perfect sense to him at the time.

Looking around the E.R., David can see all the people he’s spent time with at the hotel milling about, being checked over by paramedics. But every time a medic tries to shine a light in his eyes or make him sit down, he flinches away from them.

“I’m not hurt,” he says for probably the tenth time in a row as this head nurse now (surprise, surprise) shines a light in his eye.

“Hold still,” she says to him soothingly, like she’s talking to a startled horse. (Also an excellent animal to spend the rest of one’s life as. Damn, he needs to stop thinking like this.) “You’ve been through a great deal of psychological trauma. I insist that you spend the night here just to be safe.”

“Please, I don’t need a hospital,” David insists, even as the nurse continues her basic examination of him, “I just need to know if the Short-Sighted Woman is alright. Or, I suppose now, she’s the Blinded Woman --”

“Her name is Rachel,” the nurse says gently. “And she’s in the ICU right now, but as soon as she’s recovered you can see her.”

David breathes a sigh of relief.

The nurse looks at him kindly. “Now how about that bed? Or do I have to sedate you?”

David shakes his head, painfully exhausted all of a sudden. As soon as he’d heard that the Short-Sighted -- that Rachel is (relatively) alright and being taken care of, his energy seems to have left him. “Are there enough beds?” he asks, glancing dubiously about the E.R., which is teeming with victims of the matchmaking cult just like him.

The head nurse tsks as she too looks about the E.R., clicking her pen as she does. David is about say he’ll be fine spending the night in a waiting room chair, when she says: “I might have a place for you, follow me.” With that, she turns and begins to expertly navigate through the meandering cult victims, leaving David to follow clumsily in her wake -- she is tiny and quick and David is, well, not.

“I hope you don’t mind…” she begins regretfully as she stops before one of many small blue-curtained chambers and David opens his mouth to forgive her for whatever she’s about to apologise for, “…sharing with someone.” She opens the curtains --

\-- to reveal an unmade bed without a person, or a pillow for that matter, in it.

“Who?” David asks. He doesn’t see a sign of anybody in the little curtained room.

“Not again,” the nurse shakes her head, folding her arms. She raises her voice: “Hank, come out from under the bed.”

David feels a jolt in his stomach as someone under the bed answers her: “Are you going to let me see Manny now?”

“Hank, we’ve been through this,” the head nurse says gently, coaxingly. David gets the feeling she’s had this conversation with this under-the-bed guy -- Hank -- several times. “Manny isn’t real. Or -- not as you knew him. I have someone else here for you to meet. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind sharing your room with him. I’m sorry, I have no other beds.”

There is silence for a beat. David feels very uncomfortable, like an unwanted child being dropped off at a play date where the other child wants someone else, not him. “I can just sleep in the waiting room --” he begins when the voice under the bed interrupts him.

“He can stay,” the voice answers tiredly. “I don’t mind.”

David wants to feel happy -- technically he’s just been accepted, but the words: ‘I don’t mind,’ sound too much like: ‘I don’t care.’

“Thank you, Hank,” the nurse says gratefully. “Do you want me to bring in another bed --”

“No.” Hank says, his tone blunt and stinging like a punch to the nose. “I like it under here.”

“Okay,” the nurse says, indulgently. “I’ll bring some extra heated blankets for you then. Would you like that?”

“I guess.”

Seemingly satisfied with the mysterious under-the-bed-guy’s bleak answer, the head nurse places her hand on David’s sleeve. “I’ll bring you some heated blankets too, and an extra pillow.”

“Thank you,” David whispers. The head nurse leaves through the curtains, leaving David alone. Well, he isn’t exactly alone. There still is that guy under the bed -- Hank -- who apparently is going to stay under there while David lies on top of the bed. All night long. David doesn’t know if he likes the sound of that at all.

He shuffles over to the bed, sits lightly on the edge. He’s still too keyed up to lie down -- especially when he knows there’s someone underneath. What if the bed collapses and crushes this Hank person? David doesn’t think he can take anymore death or pain from anyone -- not even a complete stranger.

He surveys the bed. It is narrow, but not that narrow -- David knows he himself is no mean weight but Hank can’t be very big if he can fit in the narrow space between the bed and the floor…

“Hey, um,” David says, feeling his face go hot even as he contemplates what he is about to ask. “Hank?” 

“Yes?” says the voice from under the bed.

“You really don’t have to stay under the bed,” David says, licking his lips nervously. “There’s enough room up here for both of us if you don’t mi -- if you’d like.”

A beat passes and David lives and dies within it. Then:

“Okay.” 

There is a shuffling sound from under the bed as the person -- Hank -- shimmies out from underneath and stands up.

David keeps his back turned but he can feel the mattress shift slightly as the other man climbs into bed. 

“Thank you,” his new bed-mate says softly. “Um…I didn’t catch your name?”

“David.” He still doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t really know what’s stopping him.

“David. Nice name,” the other man says, and David can hear the shyness in his voice, trying to make conversation. “The name of a king. Mine’s so common. Plain old ‘Hank.’”

At this, David turns around in spite of himself. “But Hank is just a shortened version of the name ‘Henry,’” he says, his eyes landing on the thin young man with shaggy hair, chapped lips and big green eyes that he’s going to be sharing his bed with. “And there were lots of kings named Henry.”

“I never knew that,” Hank says, staring at David as he clutches the pillow he’s brought with him tight to his chest. “I’ve been going around by a nickname my whole life.”

“There are worse things,” David murmurs, dropping his gaze again under the intensity of the younger man’s gaze.

Just then the head nurse enters their room and Hank flinches so hard the bed shakes. Instinctively, David wraps an arm around those narrow shoulders and Hank responds like a vine to a lattice -- he snakes his thin arms around David’s pudgy waist and lays his head on the older man’s chest. 

The nurse hides a little smile. She sets the folded blankets on the foot of the bed. She puts a new pillow in place for them, which David gratefully lays back against, the weight of Hank’s head comforting against his heart. As the nurse drapes the heated blankets over the two of them, Hank sucks in air through his teeth and shivers violently against David. His arms squeeze even tighter around David’s middle. Hank’s vice-grip doesn’t hurt, though. In fact, David likes the secure feeling of it. Like Hank is holding him together.

“Are you okay?” David asks Hank softly when the nurse is gone.

“Yes,” Hank whispers back. “I just didn’t realize how cold I was before.”

“Me neither,” David says, just for something to say.

Silence. David breathes, feeling his plump belly press against Hank’s skinny arms. He’s not at all ashamed and he doesn’t have the urge to suck in his gut as he did back at the hotel.

“I like that you’re so warm and soft,” Hank whispers. “I almost forgot what an alive person feels like.”

“Me too,” David murmurs, bemused and amused at Hank’s odd statements.

“That just sounded really creepy,” Hank whispers now. “Are you creeped out by me?”

“No,” David laughs softly, thinking of all the horrors he’d just been through. “I’m the opposite of creeped out by you.”

“Good. ‘Cause I really like you,” Hank adjusts his head under David’s chin, “and I don’t want you to ever leave me.”

“I feel the same way about you,” David confesses truthfully.

“We should go do something together,” Hank says sleepily, his fingernails scratching tiny ticklish circles on David’s squishy side. “Tomorrow. If you want to.”

“I’d like that.” 

“It’s a date, then?”

“It’s a date.” 

And, with that, they both drift off to sleep in each others’ embrace.


End file.
